Gifts, Gadgets and Beyond

Looking for something low-tech, but practical this season? Look no further than the Smushion, which turns your coffee table into a hassock on a temporary basis. Or flip it over and it becomes a laptop desk, or tuck it under your legs or back for extra support where you need it. It's even got a handy-dandy compartment to hold the remote so you'll never lose it.

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From Fitbit to the Smushion: a sampling of this year's hottest tech-savvy gifts

REGION - Looking for something special for that someone special on your list? A gadgeteer or someone who loves/needs that one-of-a-kind gift that's not knitted by a favorite aunt?

You're in luck. Thanks to the multiple catalogs cluttering your mailbox, the plethora of stores featuring gizmos galore, and of course, the web, there are more contraptions available than ever before. Interested? Here's a sampling of this year's unique offerings:

Smart watches. You've seen the commercials, and they look pretty cool. But beware, the one you've seen on TV, the Samsung Galaxy Gear, only works with Samsung's line of Galaxy smartphones, and it has a retail price of $300. Ouch.

Until Apple releases the iWatch (soon please!), the Pebble Smartwatch may be the way to go. It offers hundreds of alternative digital watch faces, apps for many applications (such as sports scores or controlling your media player from your wrist), and it's half the price.

Still listening to your iPod with those flimsy, really uncomfortable earbuds that came with it? Those are sooo 2000.

Instead, go with Philips Fidelio M1BT wireless headphones. While the wires are gone, the booming driver is powerful enough to deliver the full bass. The closed back design means your tunes and memory foam ear cups should make for further noise insulation and comfortable wear. Volume, track selection, play and pause can be controlled by on-cup buttons, while a mic lets you make and take calls.

If it's earbuds you want, skip the cheap ones and go for the Bose QuietComfort 20. Bose, long an industry leader, is the company's first in-ear headphones to offer noise-cancelling to detect and counter outside sounds, insulating you in a cocoon of your own tunes. The battery provides up to 16 hours of noise cancellation on a single charge, with a full rejuicing via USB taking two hours.

Okay, enough music. Right up there with smart watches in the trending-markets category are fitness gadgets. If you're a runner, health nut, or just a bio-metrics measuring data-cruncher (or if you've got one on your list this year), there are some pretty nifty offerings in the fitness/wearable electronics market to consider.

Fitbit, one of the first wearable activity tracking companies, is back this year with the Fitbit Force, a watch bursting with features. In addition to tracking daily activities like steps taken or runs logged, it adds in even more tracking like sleep monitoring and a silent vibration alarm. If you're not a fan of the Force's wrist-band form factor, you can move down to the FitBit One in a clip-on-the-waist-band form factor. Continued...

If the Fitbit doesn't do it for you, consider jumping up to the Basis B1 Band. It's the Cadillac of wearable personal metric trackers and includes tracking for heart rate, skin temperature, perspiration, sleep, activity levels, GPS tracking, and more.

If all these options seem way too bulky, geeky, or in-your-face but you or someone on your list still wants to track person metrics like sleep duration and quality and daily activities, consider the newest release from Jawbone, the UP24. It looks more like a stylized bracelet than a piece of wearable electronics, but still offers personal metrics tracking like depth and quality of sleep monitoring as well as daily activity monitoring.

If you want to watch YouTube or access other web content on your television, you have options. One of the best, or at least easiest, is Google Chromecast. Chromecast is a dongle that plugs into your TV's HDMI port, so you can view YouTube, Netflix and more using compatible phone apps or the Chrome browser on any device as a remote control.

One of the most versatile options on the market at the moment is a line of set-top boxes from Roku. The Roku 3, for example, offers access to thousands of video sources including Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, movie services, sports channels, and more. It can stream 1080p content, has a handy headphone jack in the remote, interfaces with iOS/Android smartphone apps to let you browse and select movies while you're watching content - and even has motion-control in the remote so you can get your Wii-like arm-waving fix with motion-based games like Angry Birds.

If you are heavily into iTunes or boast a large video library, you might want to consider an Apple TV, Apple's offering in the world of set-top streaming. You can watch anything available in the iTunes video store as well as Netflix, YouTube videos, local video, and anything you can play on your iPhone or other iOS device.

Okay, there's your hi-tech. But if you're into comfort, maybe a low-tech solution is just what you want. From our friends at Plow & Hearth, the Smushion turns your coffee table into a hassock on a temporary basis. Or flip it over and it becomes a laptop desk, or tuck it under your legs or back for extra support where you need it. Hey, it's even got a handy-dandy compartment to hold the remote so you'll never lose it.

From Fitbit to the Smushion: a sampling of this year's hottest tech-savvy gifts

REGION - Looking for something special for that someone special on your list? A gadgeteer or someone who loves/needs that one-of-a-kind gift that's not knitted by a favorite aunt?

You're in luck. Thanks to the multiple catalogs cluttering your mailbox, the plethora of stores featuring gizmos galore, and of course, the web, there are more contraptions available than ever before. Interested? Here's a sampling of this year's unique offerings:

Smart watches. You've seen the commercials, and they look pretty cool. But beware, the one you've seen on TV, the Samsung Galaxy Gear, only works with Samsung's line of Galaxy smartphones, and it has a retail price of $300. Ouch.

Until Apple releases the iWatch (soon please!), the Pebble Smartwatch may be the way to go. It offers hundreds of alternative digital watch faces, apps for many applications (such as sports scores or controlling your media player from your wrist), and it's half the price.

Still listening to your iPod with those flimsy, really uncomfortable earbuds that came with it? Those are sooo 2000.

Instead, go with Philips Fidelio M1BT wireless headphones. While the wires are gone, the booming driver is powerful enough to deliver the full bass. The closed back design means your tunes and memory foam ear cups should make for further noise insulation and comfortable wear. Volume, track selection, play and pause can be controlled by on-cup buttons, while a mic lets you make and take calls.

If it's earbuds you want, skip the cheap ones and go for the Bose QuietComfort 20. Bose, long an industry leader, is the company's first in-ear headphones to offer noise-cancelling to detect and counter outside sounds, insulating you in a cocoon of your own tunes. The battery provides up to 16 hours of noise cancellation on a single charge, with a full rejuicing via USB taking two hours.

Okay, enough music. Right up there with smart watches in the trending-markets category are fitness gadgets. If you're a runner, health nut, or just a bio-metrics measuring data-cruncher (or if you've got one on your list this year), there are some pretty nifty offerings in the fitness/wearable electronics market to consider.

Fitbit, one of the first wearable activity tracking companies, is back this year with the Fitbit Force, a watch bursting with features. In addition to tracking daily activities like steps taken or runs logged, it adds in even more tracking like sleep monitoring and a silent vibration alarm. If you're not a fan of the Force's wrist-band form factor, you can move down to the FitBit One in a clip-on-the-waist-band form factor.

If the Fitbit doesn't do it for you, consider jumping up to the Basis B1 Band. It's the Cadillac of wearable personal metric trackers and includes tracking for heart rate, skin temperature, perspiration, sleep, activity levels, GPS tracking, and more.

If all these options seem way too bulky, geeky, or in-your-face but you or someone on your list still wants to track person metrics like sleep duration and quality and daily activities, consider the newest release from Jawbone, the UP24. It looks more like a stylized bracelet than a piece of wearable electronics, but still offers personal metrics tracking like depth and quality of sleep monitoring as well as daily activity monitoring.

If you want to watch YouTube or access other web content on your television, you have options. One of the best, or at least easiest, is Google Chromecast. Chromecast is a dongle that plugs into your TV's HDMI port, so you can view YouTube, Netflix and more using compatible phone apps or the Chrome browser on any device as a remote control.

One of the most versatile options on the market at the moment is a line of set-top boxes from Roku. The Roku 3, for example, offers access to thousands of video sources including Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, movie services, sports channels, and more. It can stream 1080p content, has a handy headphone jack in the remote, interfaces with iOS/Android smartphone apps to let you browse and select movies while you're watching content - and even has motion-control in the remote so you can get your Wii-like arm-waving fix with motion-based games like Angry Birds.

If you are heavily into iTunes or boast a large video library, you might want to consider an Apple TV, Apple's offering in the world of set-top streaming. You can watch anything available in the iTunes video store as well as Netflix, YouTube videos, local video, and anything you can play on your iPhone or other iOS device.

Okay, there's your hi-tech. But if you're into comfort, maybe a low-tech solution is just what you want. From our friends at Plow & Hearth, the Smushion turns your coffee table into a hassock on a temporary basis. Or flip it over and it becomes a laptop desk, or tuck it under your legs or back for extra support where you need it. Hey, it's even got a handy-dandy compartment to hold the remote so you'll never lose it.